The Immigration connection?
The LA Times’ Tim Rutten scathingly takes CNN to task regarding the Republican YouTube debate, particularly over its “immigration obsession”…
HERE’S what Pew found: By an overwhelming margin, Americans think the war in Iraq is the most important issue facing the United States, followed by the economy, healthcare and energy prices. In fact, if you lump the war into a category with terrorism and other foreign policy issues, 40% of Americans say foreign affairs are their biggest concern in this election cycle. If you do something similar with all issues related to the economy, 31% list those questions as their most worrisome issue. As anybody who has looked at their 401(k) or visited a gas pump would expect, that aggregate figure has increased dramatically since Pew started polling in January. Back then, for example, concerns over the war outpaced economic anxieties by fully 8 to 1. By contrast, just 6% of the survey’s national sample said that immigration was the most important electoral issue. Moreover, that number hasn’t changed in a statistically meaningful way since the first of the year. In other words, more than nine out of 10 Americans think something matters more than immigration in this presidential election.
So, why did CNN make immigration the keystone of this debate? What standard dictated the decision to give that much time to an issue so remote from the majority of voters’ concerns? The answer is that CNN’s most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform. In fact, Dobbs led into Wednesday’s debate with a good solid dose of immigrant bashing. His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. So, what’s good for Dobbs is good for CNN.
In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans’ debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you’ve made a bigger audience for Dobbs.That’s corruption, and it’s why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour “debating” an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal — and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed. That’s particularly true because that same Pew poll reported findings of particular relevance to Republican voters, the vast majority of whom continue to support the war in Iraq.
I wonder what Republicans this poll reached….immigration is the issue that conservative bloggers and talk radio listeners are by far the most passionate and concerned about these days from what I can tell. Iraq is important no doubt, but the work in Iraq is pointless if we can’t secure our borders. Every other country on the planet controls its borders, but somehow for America to do it is racist. Go figure.
Comment by Laurel — December 2, 2007 @ 3:32 am
Laurel is right.The number one issue for 2008 will be Illegal Immigration period.That’s a fact!
Comment by SHANE — December 2, 2007 @ 3:43 am
IMO, the two big issues for next years election:
1A) Iraq/War On Terror
1B) Illegal Immigration
If you don’t feel safe and you’re unable to control your own border (just like every other sovereign nation does) then nothing else really matters, does it???
Comment by Rich — December 2, 2007 @ 6:40 am
Not a shock at all that the L.A. Times would get their facts wrong.
Lou Dobbs does not go up against Olbermann in his time slot. Dobbs is on an hour earlier. Typical.
Comment by bigred — December 2, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
Rutten “Lou Dobbs…good round of IMMIGRANT bashing….” I dont recall Loud ever bashing IMMIGRANTS on any show. Now Illegal Immigrants and their appeaser/enablers…yes, but the enablers seem to want to conflate the two to bash those that are against massive invasion of the country. This invasion is in no way like the previous immigration waves. The others were not from a contiguous country that willingly enables the practice in order to purge their country of their poor and uneducated in order to profit on them with remittances. The country of Mexico should have charges brought against it in the UN or World Court on Human rights charges for their practices.
Comment by mbill — December 2, 2007 @ 9:10 pm